


Just How To Be

by Prismatic Bell (Nina_Dances_In_Technicolor)



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (TV), Sailor Moon - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, But you can't just explain it out, Canon Queer Character, Canon Queer Relationship, Child Abuse, Dehumanization, Enslavement of non-humans, Forced Prostitution, Hurt/Comfort, Intersex, It Gets Better, M/M, Nothing is explicit, Other, Physical Abuse, Recovery, Seriously it's dark as hell guys, Underage Prostitution, Zoisite isn't entirely human, it's in there
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-28
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-15 02:15:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2211960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nina_Dances_In_Technicolor/pseuds/Prismatic%20Bell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoisite didn't ask to be born this way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Whew. Okay. I've been advised this should go in the notes, so here we go.
> 
> The Zoisite you are about to meet is the result of my musings on his mismatched pronouns for himself in the Classic canon, combined with his penchant for going undercover as a woman in the manga. It occurred to me that although a lot of people write a cis male Zoisite or a cis female Zoisite, nobody's ever really explored the fact that he, like Haruka, canonically exists in this weird gray area, and I wanted to explore what might happen in a world where Zoisite was intersex. The result is decidedly not pretty and rather dark. It DOES get better--Zoisite is lucky, in that respect. But this first part is going to involve a lot of really unsavory implications.
> 
> To sum up: this story involves a male Zoisite who does not have entirely male parts, and in his place and time that causes a lot of problems. 
> 
> Title taken from Ryan Star's _So Ordinary_ , which could easily be a running theme for this story.

He is small, still so unsure on his own legs they don't bother to chain him when they pay his mother and take him away.

His hair is gold.

His eyes are green.

They name him Freak.

\--------------------------------

There are six children in the traveling show. None of them are like him. One can float. One can make fire with her bare hands. They both get to keep their clothes on during exhibits, and he's jealous of them. It's cold where they are, and sometimes his skin turns funny colors before people are done poking and prodding between his legs.

_Strange,_ they say.

_Weird,_ they say.

_You should get them back for that,_ the girl who makes fire says, and when he tells the men who bring his food that he doesn't want to be Freak anymore, that Freak is the word some of the people who look at him use with their mouths turned down and their noses turned up, they laugh.

They rename him _Ti'tsa._

The girl who makes fire makes their metal food plates very hot to burn the men's hands when she hears his new name. She won't tell him why.

It takes about five years for him to figure out what ti'tsa means. _Girlboy._ Ti, girl; tsa, boy; that much he knows, and it's simple. But there's another meaning behind it, a darker one, a stranger one that's hard to put into words.

He learns it the night someone puts gold in an exhibitor's hand and he gets pulled out of his cart when he turns his back to the door, and off he's dragged to a tent. He protests when someone says he's twelve. He's not sure how old he is. He knows twelve is too big a number. Somebody hits him in the back of the head, and he bites his lip and tastes blood. 

Later, when they shove him back into the cart with the other kids, he finds the corner farthest from the door and curls up in the straw with his back to the wall.

He promises himself he will never keep his back to the door again.

\----------------------------------

He really is twelve, or something like it, when he slips a knife out of a keeper's belt and hides it in the straw; when the girl who makes fire heats the locks til they snap, when they all tumble out of the cart. Some person—maybe the keeper, maybe an exhibitor, maybe the man who owns them all, he doesn't know—comes running. The children are scrawny, thin beyond compare; the keepers are fat. It's still easy to slit his throat with a single motion, like they've practiced this for days. Blood spatters his face and his long golden hair and his wasted naked chest, where skin has started to thicken in strange ways. He finds a handkerchief in the fat man's pocket and cleans his face. The girl who makes fire kisses his cheek, and he shrinks away. She wishes him luck, and then they are all of them on their own: two of them have not survived to see today, but a group of four children traveling alone, all of them the slightest bit off-kilter, are still sure to draw attention.

He's two days from the circus, hungry and tired and wearing clothes stolen from somebody's barn, when somebody calls him a fine-looking young thing and offers him the first coin that's ever been put into his hands, when it all comes home:

He's a murderer.

And nothing has really changed.

\----------------------------

He calls himself Alyon and wears loose shirts to hide the breasts that won't disappear no matter how tightly he wraps them with rags. It's not a name he actually likes, but it's common, and commonness is his friend. It lets him disappear in the crowd. He doesn't know if he's still sought for the neck he opened those years ago at the fairground, and has no intention of finding out.

And sometimes he unties the rags and undoes the laces on his shirt, and earns enough coin to keep him going until the next down, the next inn full of drunks willing to pay gold instead of silver for the privilege of saying they've found one of the ti'tsa.

Sometimes he thinks the only difference between the road alone and the road with the circus is the lack of iron shackles.

It takes him an age to find his way from the raggedy edges of the country to the towns, and from there to the city. Part of the length is pure misfortune—he finds himself caught in two separate towns at two separate parts of the winter, doing his time on his knees and waiting for the snows to melt so he can leave. But part of it is fear—he can admit that to himself, if to nobody else. In the royal city he'll be at the mercy of anyone from the circus who wanted to report him. His face has lengthened and his voice is different, but he's sure anyone who wanted to could still discover him.

What he doesn't count on is the size of the city—once in its limits, he's just another face. He's not even the only person with a strange body here; some people have horns, and wings, and one of his few encounters that's not entirely as painful as the rest involves someone with extremely long fingers and a tongue that moves in ways that hurt a little to look at, and it's only later that he realizes the fingers had an extra knuckle and the tongue was forked. 

He's in a tavern one night debating if he wants to try his luck with the fellow in the corner—dark hair, blue eyes, and he'd _almost_ look like a commoner if not for the good boots on his feet and the way he keeps looking around like he thinks he'll be recognized.

There's money there, a lot of it, and he's just about made up his mind to give it a go when someone grabs his chest from behind, and he shrieks and turns to slap the offending person away—

—and watches in horror as his fingernails open two red streaks along a cheek above a distinctive gray uniform.

_Officer._

He covers his mouth with both hands until he's sure he's not going to scream. He should apologize, should offer whatever it takes to excise his face from this man's mind, but he's finally reached the point where he doesn't think he can stand one more night of somebody else's cock in his mouth, and he just stares over his own dirty fingertips at the brown-haired officer snarling retribution and reaching a single hand out to grab his wrist. Maybe both of them. Goddesses know they're thin enough.

And then there's a second neatly-gloved hand far too large to belong to the same officer, pushing his hand out of the way.

“You scared her,” a deep voice says, and he lets out a breath he didn't know he was holding in. “Apologies, lady, he's worse for drink.”

He should say something, should acknowledge the courtesy, especially when he turns and sees a second gray uniform. This one has white hair and icy blue eyes, and he's sober. There's no way they've both failed to notice the red ribbon tied into his hair. The first one was probably counting on it.

Finally he just nods, hunches his shoulders in and crosses his arms and looks down. The second officer puts a hand on his arm.

“May I escort you?”

The brown-haired officer speaks up before he can answer. 

“Wait,” he says. “You're that kid from the freakshow.”

\-------------------------

It's the softest bed he's ever been in, and it actually smells clean, and so does the air around him. He doesn't remember actually getting in a bed, but that's nothing new. It wouldn't be the first time he got drunk in the name of earning money.

There's no headache, though, and he doesn't feel like he needs to vomit, and when he swings his legs from under the covers they're steady. 

His shoes are next to the bed, but he's also still wearing the dress he went out in last night. That's new.

He stands up and toes into his shoes, and hopes what few possessions he has weren't tossed out of the inn last night. He doesn't remember paying for his room, and this isn't it.

He's planning on leaving quietly and assuming he got burnt on payment, but he doesn't actually get any farther than the hall. The officer with white hair is standing in it, and suddenly everything comes flooding back: the accusation. A heavy iron weight on his chest, unable to breathe. Both of them staring in unison as he clawed out for the second time that night, trying to latch onto something before he fell.

And then, he's pretty sure, he fainted.

He might as well hang himself with his dress-cord now. He's already as good as given a confession.

“You didn't give me your name,” the officer says, and the weight is back on his chest, breathing difficult, speech impossible. “Mine is Kunzite. I apologize for taking you away. I thought it might be healthier for you after he started shouting.”

He nods again, just a little, numb. Any moment now they'll get to the end of the pleasantries, and then the pain will start. Maybe a whipping in the square for assault of an officer—it wouldn't be the first time, some officials in some towns doing it just to bare his breasts to the crowd. Maybe he'll be escorted off to the Palace of Justice. Or maybe retribution will be more personal.

That wouldn't be the first time, either.

“I doubt you'll find a fit in my clothes, but you're welcome to try if you'd prefer it.”

He doesn't mean to get to his knees, exactly; he just feels them go unhinged, and down he goes in the main passage of this man's house, skirts puffing out to either side of him in a cloud of worn cotton and linen.

He isn't there long. The officer puts an arm around his waist and lifts him off the floor like he weighs no more than a feather pen.

“You haven't eaten.”

Something about the statement is off, but it's not until he's halfway through the meat and bread he's offered that he realizes what it is: it wasn't a question. 

And he's probably going to be asked to pay for this food, but it's the first real meat he's had in he's not sure how long and the bread is fresh and soft instead of tasting slightly of mold, so he'll worry about payment when it's asked of him. Kunzite pours two cups of some strange-looking liquid, and after a cautious sip, his eyes go wide.

It's coffee. He's had it before, but only once, and not in years, and the last time he had it, he'd tasted something more bitter underneath it and slept for hours, only to wake up bloody and sore.

The thought is enough to make him put the cup down. For that matter, he shouldn't have eaten the meat.

“I spoke with Nephrite this morning,” Kunzite says, and sips his own coffee. Still no guarantee. “He said if you were the same person he thought you were, you were exhibited as one of the Fae folk. That doesn't necessarily validate your being shown in a sideshow, but it could complicate finding your parents.”

“My father is dead.” It's the first full sentence he's gotten out since he ordered his first drink last night. “My mother sold me. She said she didn't want an abomination in her house.”

“How long ago? You're not old enough to be for sale.” The second sentence carries a delicacy he's pretty sure he's never heard before, an implication he's never seen hidden that way. He looks down at the coffee and wishes he dared to drink it. He plays with the cup, instead—busies his hands.

“I've been 'for sale' for years, soh.” 

It's not the right term for an officer. Soh is for a landowner, not an official. But he can't remember the one he wants, and maybe, maybe, luck will be with him and ignorance won't be construed as disrespect.

Kunzite reaches out and pulls the red ribbon out of his hair. His curls fall in a tangled unwashed cloud around his face, and he winces away.

“No longer.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some people are haunted by the spirits of the dead. Zoisite's ghosts are alive, and in him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whee! It's all worldbuilding stuff this time. First, a short story: when I was in middle school, I got bored in school one day and since I can't draw, I decided to invent an alphabet for Elysian, instead. The result, by Christmas break, was a 48-character alphabet and a functioning language with basic grammar rules and a vocabulary of about 300 words. Most of the vocabulary itself is lost to time and my own discarded fifth-grade notebooks, but a decent chunk of the grammar and the way sound-characters worked was easy enough to remember, so I'm totally making use of it again. I chose to minimize the use of actual Ell language even though that's how I "hear" the characters in my head, since it's probably of little interest to anyone but me, but here are some notes you should have:
> 
> \--"Ti'tsa" is a slur comparable to that T-word for transgender people that decent people don't use. Its literal translation is as a compound of the word "boy" (ti) and the word "girl" (ta), but it carries really derogatory implications. It's also the only word Zoisite knows for what his body looks like. 
> 
> \--"Working nightlines" isn't a euphemism, and in fact it's pretty rough language. A nightliner is a prostitute who charges for time rather than specific acts, often because he or she fits some kind of fetishist look or behavior (in Zoisite's case, androgyny and the appearance of having both male and female parts). The implication is that customers "line up" to get serviced.
> 
> \--"The Alliance" is the name for eight itty-bitty countries that will eventually come to make up Elysian as a whole. From a geopolitical standpoint, you can envision it as the idea of Russia as a country versus the USSR as a country.
> 
> \--"Tavvy" is an Anglicized version of "trat," which, in its turn, is slang for "mitratal"--spirit-house. (Used as an adjective, it's also the same kind of slang as the English "shitfaced." You can get totally trat in a trat. And then possibly your friends will try to make you say you got trat in a trat, because try to say that three times fast when you're falling-down drunk.)
> 
> \--Zoisite comments that two of the characters in his name are in the word Elysian, and after you take a look at the characters in his name you're probably going to go _what the fuck?_ So here you go: in its own tongue, the characters that spell out Elysian are i, l, zya, ai, n. The two Zoisite shares are the first two of his name, zya and i. (I is a joining character and zya means fate or destiny. Zoisite's name is also spelled incorrectly--although the name itself is unisex, the final character should be "ti" because Zoisite identifies as male. Kunzite probably should've checked that before actually writing it down. Too late now.) Zoisite's name as we hear him pronounce it in canon--from a perspective where these events are real, rather than "because I'm bullshitting stuff to explain how this can be nine thousand years ago and still contain names from the 1800s"--would then be the result of his language and accent being translated into modern languages for the convenience of the audience. There are no characters in Ell that correspond to the English O.

The water is black when he gets out of it, and he wrinkles his nose. His hair is noticeably lighter, even through the sheen of water. So is his skin, where it's not bruised. He pulls a towel around himself and shivers, and there's a knock at the door into the privy. It's inside the house, something slightly less novel than the idea of walking on air. 

“Clothes,” says the deep voice on the other side of the door, and he opens it enough to peep out. Kunzite is standing with his back turned. Modesty—another strange concept. “They're old. But they'll keep you covered.”

He accepts the clothes, unfolds them and marvels. What Kunzite calls “old” looks, to his eyes, almost new. There's nothing in the pile to contain his breasts with, but the shirt laces all the way to the top and the trousers are loose-legged and tie below the knee. 

They're dayclothes. The kind of thing the merchant class wears, male and female both, for daily work.

He leaves the dress where he was told: in the basket behind the door. Then he slips out.

He's careful to avoid Kunzite's face. There was an incident, earlier, and the incident was awkward at best, and he's honestly surprised Kunzite didn't put him on the street. 

Not everyone finds ti'tsa attractive. Which leaves him the very serious problem of how to pay for his food and bed and clothing—and the bath, which involved actual hot water and real soap. He can ask, he supposes. There are two kinds of officers, and Kunzite doesn't seem like the one who enjoys welting people across the face for breathing. 

He heads for the kitchen, squeezing past Kunzite in the hallway on his way into the privy. And then wishes he hadn't, when Kunzite reappears looking both startled and tense.

“Where are you hurt?”

Everywhere, really. He's clumsy and even things he hasn't used recently ache from lack of food and sleeping space. But nothing smarts more than usual, and he blinks in surprise. “What?”

“There's blood on the floor.” His face changes to one of concern. “Do you need—?” A hand gesture that plainly says something to the effect of _womenthings that I don't understand._ He's taken note of Kunzite's hands, and the lack of a ring on either one. He shakes his head and tries to scurry into the hall.

“No—I don't think—I'll clean it up, it happens with some men when I—“

Kunzite catches his arm, and he shrinks down—and Kunzite, for a wonder, lets go. “Then you are injured.”

“I—“ He hesitates, bites his lip. “I don't know?”

Kunzite shakes his head and steers him back into the kitchen with a brief command to sit. He does, feet tucked under him. It helps, sometimes. When Kunzite returns, it's with a bloody rag in his hand that he tosses into a clay canister with the rest of the garbage. He pours two cups of beer and offers one over.

He studies Kunzite over the edge of the cup as they drink—if he was going to be drugged, it would've happened already. What he sees is a man made up of more perfect angles than he's ever seen: triangle cheeks, smooth flat hands, a broad expanse of plain forehead, shoulders he could probably level a floor with. The whole combines in a series of tangents to add up to someone very tall and broad who looks like he could have been carved from the same stone as the house's outer walls. Kunzite drains his cup.

“You said 'some men'.”

“Not everybody wants the same things.” Obvious. Stupid. He looks back down at his cup.

“Have you ever seen a healer for the bleeding?”

He shakes his head. “I know why. I'm small.”

“To look at your height, I'd say you're not a day over eleven.”

“I was twelve two summers ago!” It's quite possibly the biggest outburst he's ever had, and he immediately claps a hand over his mouth. Don't yell, don't shout, don't draw attention . . . Kunzite frowns.

“You're fourteen?”

“I—don't know.” He fidgets with what's left of the cup of beer. “When I left the caravan I was twelve and I counted by autumns from when I joined it, and I left in spring and traveled the year through. We were on the outskirts of the Alliance. It took a long time.”

“Then you're almost fourteen.”

He bites his lip, squeezes his eyes shut. “I don't know.”

There's a long pause.

“If the number thirteen follows twelve, and fourteen follows thirteen . . . “

He opens his eyes, but keeps them on the cup. “Yes. Then. I think.”

“And you've been working nightlines ever since.” Kunzite doesn't wait for an answer. “And you've never carried a child?”

His mouth falls open. He shouldn't laugh. He _mustn't._ Finally he just shakes his head to force the urge down. “Things like me can't carry a child, sai.”

“The Fae carry—“

A pause, and he can see Kunzite going over things in his head. _He doesn't actually know. The other officer didn't tell him._

He pulls his arms around his middle. It doesn't always help when he gets hit, but sometimes it keeps him from vomiting up whatever he's eaten. 

“They weren't showing you for your heritage.”

He shakes his head, squeezes his eyes shut. He's in the house of a man with a sword of palace steel and he's bare beneath the borrowed shirt and trousers. 

“Have I been calling you by the wrong title?”

The breath he takes in is shaky, and he has to speak low. He thought he was done crying years ago, but no—he can still find tears in the face of unexpected kindness. “Women earn more and men travel safer, sai. I suppose it depends if you're buying or selling.”

“I asked your preference, not your price.”

It's rude not to answer, but he can't think of a thing to say, and finally he shakes his head as far as it'll go when it's bent down to his chest.

“Your name?”

 _Alyon of Tisla._ It's the answer he's been giving since the first town after the caravan, and it's never sounded right.

“I don't have one.”

There's a frustrated sigh from the other side of the table. He flinches. He should go—remind Kunzite what payment he owes and offer to make good however he can. There's a clunk: Kunzite's cup on the table.

“You'll need to have one to register as a citizen,” he comments, like he's talking about something no more important than grain prices. “And a place to live wouldn't go amiss, either. I can't let you go back to the tavern. I'd be violating my oaths. You may be older than you look, but you're still too young to be earning money on your back.”

“I do all right.”

“That isn't the point.” There's another long pause. “You can stay here if you enter studies.”

He's startled enough to look up. “What?”

“You won't earn any kind of silver in this city if you can't read. There are classes at the fountain in town center for people who don't have patrons for private schools. You're too old to go on the orphan rolls, the chances we'd track your mother are slim at best, and nobody sane would send you out to do hand labor. You'd snap like a twig in a single day. I'll sponsor you.”

He looks down at his hands. “That isn't necessary, sai.”

“I didn't say it was necessary.”

“Why?”

Another pause, even longer than the first two. “Because the King has a system in place to protect people with something to contribute, and I didn't join the guard to watch it fail people who got caught in loopholes simply because I was more fortunate.”

He bites his lip. “I—I can't . . . “

“What happens now is you say 'thank you,' little one.”

 _Little one._ He's heard those words before—sometimes mockery, sometimes from people asking him for terrible things in exchange for extra money. But he's never heard them before quite like that, and it's enough to startle the requested thanks out of him before he can protest again.

And like that, it's done—there is no turning back.

\-------------------

He wakes up before cock-crow, disoriented and startled. He's used to being up until dawnlight and then sleeping past noon; he doesn't remember the last time he experienced the sunrise from this side.

There's only one true mirror in the house, and it's beside Kunzite's washstand for shaving. But there are looking-plates, and copper bowls he can fill with water, and after he opens the shutters and lights the lamp he glances into the polished piece of brass on the wall. An unfamiliar face looks back at him: a clean face with neatly-plaited hair and no circles under the eyes. No sores around the mouth, either. It's almost nice-looking.

 _I am Zoisite of Elysian, and that face is mine,_ he thinks. It's still a thought even more disorienting than the strange and arbitrary changes in his sleep schedule the last week has wrought, but he's slowly fitting his mind around it. The face in the looking-plate is harder to understand than the name, which slotted neatly into his life as soon as Kunzite told him what it meant. _Child of fate._ There was a learned man who carried the name once, and his use of it is remembered because he changed the way glass was made; but it's best known as the name of the woman who founded the city, untold centuries ago. When he accepted the name as his own Kunzite showed him the four characters that made it up— _zya,i, sai, ta_ —and smiled, thin and almost invisible, when he said he'd seen two of them in the arch over the city's gates. 

His name is part of the city, and that feels right. It feels like belonging somewhere, instead of drifting around the country hanging onto the back of caravans or plodding down the road. 

He still hasn't decided which title he wants to take, but on his second day here Kunzite brought him a chest garment folded matter-of-factly in the middle of a stack of clothes—the kind he's seen female officers wear during training and patrols to keep their breasts pushed in and small instead of in the way of drawing a bow or sword. His first few days he was too sore from beatings and sleeping curled in a corner of the penny room to even think about using it, but he can wear it now, and it makes him look like he has no breasts at all, without making it hard to breathe the way the ever-slipping rags did.

He's just fine with that.

The two pairs of short trousers and shirts are pretty clearly used from the guardroom, but they fit and they're clean and wonderfully comfortable after years of fitting into whatever he happened across, and he's just fine with that, too.

He pads quietly out into the hall; Kunzite sleeps strongly but lightly, and unused as he is to company in his home even the softest of steps can wake him. Zoisite tries to make his own steps silent.

There's a lamp lit in the kitchen, and Zoisite wonders if he should transgress Kunzite's closed door to alert him; there are some early risers in Elysian-town, but waking after sunrise is a trait Zoisite quickly discovered he and his new patron share. 

He doesn't quite possess the courage to push the door open, though, and so instead he takes the letterknife from the desk in his room and heads for the kitchen, weapon in hand. There are voices low and deep from the other side of the doorway, and he wonders if he should try to surprise them alone. He's pretty sure there are three, and he's one, and small.

After a moment's thought, he tugs the rawhide from the end of his braid and pulls his hair apart. Even the hardest of criminals will have a moment's confusion at a tiny girl with a knife in her hand, and if he can get two quickly he can handle the third until Kunzite comes running. They can't be far apart from each other; the kitchen is small.

He takes a deep breath, and steps into the doorway with a _who are you?_ on his lips . . . . and lowers the knife, nonplussed, at the sight of Kunzite and two other men in uniforms sitting at the table with beer and beef. All three look up—the other two startled, Kunzite merely curious.

“You're up early.”

Zoisite almost can't reply. Then he sees the byplay behind Kunzite's head—the blonde's eyes going wide, gesturing to the brown-haired one and then nodding at Kunzite—and bites his tongue to hold back a smile. Whatever assumption they've made is wrong, but it's still funny to see them both so shocked.

“I think I heard you.”

Kunzite's eyes fall on the letterknife in his hand. “And what were you intending to do with that?”

Zoisite looks down at it. Next to the officers' swords, the dainty little knife looks ridiculous. “I thought you were burglars?”

The blonde starts laughing. The brown-haired one humphs. Kunzite chuckles and gestures him to the table.

“I don't know you'd do much with a blade like that, but your bravery should be commended,” he says, and nods at the slices of meat in the middle of the table. Zoisite takes one and nibbles. “My sponsor, gentlemen,” he continues, and takes a swallow of beer. “Zoisite, these men are on my patrol. Expect them often and treat them as you would me. Nephrite—“ The man from the bar, so different when sober Zoisite didn't even recognize him—“Jadeite.”

“Could cut somebody's throat with it,” Jadeite comments with a nod at the knife, and Zoisite tenses. “I saw one last year. Lady with three kids, husband with seven. His throat wasn't the only thing she cut, either.”

“I saw a man stabbed in a roadside tavvy once,” Zoisite murmurs. “He didn't get up again.”

Nephrite shakes his head and takes the letterknife. “Not with something like this, you didn't. Try to stab anywhere but flesh with this and it's going to break right off.” He passes it back to Kunzite, who drops it in his uniform pocket. “They've got to turn up sooner or later, you can't use magic that blatant and then just drop from sight. I'd like to see it happen _before_ the Moon delegation arrives.”

“Wouldn't we all,” Kunzite comments. “By all means, try scrying. It can't send us any further afield than we already are.” He sighs. “All we need is one good swill fire and the whole town will go up in flames. They couldn't have waited until the _wet_ season to get here.”

“Magic fire?” Zoisite pauses in the middle of his meat. Kunzite grunts. 

“One of the palace wisemen says so,” he comments. “I don't know how he can tell, but there it is.” He sighs and finishes the last of his beer. “Seven o'clock tonight?”

“Better make it six,” Nephrite comments. “If we can get in by dusk we might at least stop another house-burning.”

“Six,” Jadeite agrees. Zoisite says nothing. Magic is rare; firemagic is rarer still. He sits with his meat, no longer hungry, until Kunzite comes back from his farewells to clear the table, and then he stands so fast he almost knocks over his stool.

“I can do the washing up,” he says, and does his best to ignore Kunzite's eyes on the back of his neck. It doesn't last long. “There was a girl. In the circus. She could make fire. She escaped too.”

“Do you know where this girl is now?”

Zoisite shakes his head. “What happens when you catch—?”

“If what we suspect turns out to be so, then there's a child out there with magic they can't control and they'll find a home in the palace,” Kunzite tells him. “The King disapproves, but the Prince suggested some time ago we might improve our lot if we followed the example of some of our associates. The Moon Kingdom, most specifically. They say there's not a single person in all of the Silver Kingdom with neither food nor home. If we're wrong and someone's been trying to kill entire families for no reason . . . “ He shrugs. “The gallows recognizes no title.”

Zoisite looks down at the wooden plates. Thinks about crying in a corner, and a quiet voice: _Shhh, everyone's sleeping. Here, let me show you something._ Thinks about a dainty purple flame dancing on a fingertip. Thinks about an angry face turning metal red-hot with a touch and saying _don't_ ever _just call yourself that._ Thinks about what it must be like to live and study in the palace, with its beautiful fountains and stone columns and bright banners and the favor of the Prince.

“They called her Firestarter, but she called herself Beryl,” he says at last. “She had red hair. They used to hit her with sticks to make her catch the wood on fire. There was a boy in there who could hurt you without—” He frowns, rubs his hands together rapidly, and then rubs them over his hair and wiggles his fingers. Kunzite nods.

“I understand. It's called sparking.”

“She slept next to me because he'd do it . . . the sparking . . . to the kids who were smaller than him. She wouldn't hurt somebody just for the fun of it, she was the one who used to keep order.”

“Your age?”

“A little older. I don't know how much.”

Kunzite puts a hand on his shoulder, and he tenses. 

“Thank you for your help,” he says, and Zoisite catches in the corner of his eye Kunzite stifling a yawn. “If you're up to it today I'd like you to go to the marketsquare. I was on night patrol and by noon everything good is sold.”

“I feel better.” 

“Good. I'll give you money before I sleep. Tonight will be long.”

Zoisite nods. He can't shake the feeling something wrong is coming.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zoisite's past is never far away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not really a whole lot this time.
> 
> Violence and dead, unburied bodies in the second segment. Reader discretion is advised.
> 
> Given this canon's uneasy relationship with alcohol and consent, I feel it should be noted that Kunzite getting Zoisite tipsy is 1) unintentional 2) nonsexual and 3) without malice on Kunzite's part. His intentions are exactly as stated in-story; he just also has no frame of reference for Zoisite's alcohol tolerance, given that until a month ago in story-time Zoisite's entire relationship with alcohol was "I don't want to do this, so I'm going to drink until I black out" and since then it's been almost nil.

He's proud of himself when he doesn't scream at the knock on the door. There's no doubt there's an official on the other side—not with a knock like that—but he still manages to put down the slate with the first line of the alphabet chalked on it in Kunzite's narrow handwriting, instead of dropping it. His own—large and childish but less shaky than yesterday—is beneath all the letters but _au_. _Au_ , he thinks, is going to irritate him right into his grave. 

It's Nephrite, and his face is as impassive as the wind.

“With me,” he says, and although Zoisite peppers him with questions, he answers none—just repeats himself and stares pointedly at the jacket on the wall that's decidedly too small to be Kunzite's.

No choice. And so Zoisite pulls on the jacket and toes into his own old shoes and follows Nephrite out of the house, careful to blow out his lamp and lock the door. Two streets over, someone is yelling drunkenly about the Goddesses. There's music coming from the direction of the tavvy, and a lamp-lighter slowly making his way down the street. 

A normal night, in other words. But the first time he's been out after dark since coming to Kunzite's house, and it's strange how quickly the night has become alien.

Nephrite walks him up the stairs of the palace—a building he never expected to be in, much less through the front gate. Kunzite is waiting at the top, and they walk three abreast into the receiving hall.

“That's him!”

Zoisite has just enough time to look up at the shriek before he's almost knocked over backward by a sudden tackle, and then lifted right off his feet. A cloud of dark red hair fills his vision; a pair of arms lock around his waist. 

“You're alive!”

He pushes away and stumbles back, and a familiar face comes into his sight. Beryl. Smiling like he's never seen—wide and happy and full of nothing but excited glee—and grown to an incredible height. Had she not picked him up, he would've ended up with his face buried in her breasts. She laughs and grabs his hands.

“They said you were here. I didn't believe them.”

“I wouldn't have believed it was you, if they hadn't said . . . “ He stops, bites his lip, looks away. Her answering laugh is embarrassed.

“I'm not used to spaces this . . . cramped. It's easier for things to get out of control. But you're alive!” And she hugs him again, tight and strong. However she's spent the last two years, she hasn't been starving. “And we're all together again.”

“Dodi's here?”

For the first time, something less than happy crosses her face. Real sadness, something Zoisite didn't know she had left beneath her rage. She shakes her head.

“Dead,” she says. “Last winter. He got blood fever. That man who brought you here said you're called Zoisite now.” Her eyes flick over his shoulder, and Zoisite is suddenly aware they're still watching.

He nods. “He found me last moon. It's been . . . different.”

Beryl lets out an unladylike snort. “Your _face_ is different.”

“ _My_ face is excellent, thank you, _your_ face is the different one,” he tells her, and shrieks and clamps his arms down when she snakes forward and drags her fingers down his sides. She laughs again, her mouth right next to his ear, and on the exhale she whispers something through her smile.

“I didn't tell them.”

He puts his arms around her neck and hooks his chin on her shoulder. “I didn't either.”

There's a step not quite so sharp as Kunzite's or Nephrite's, and they both let go. Between the two officials at the door is the rich man from the tavvy, and Zoisite feels his mouth drop open as the man bows.

_I very nearly tried to seduce the Prince._

He returns the bow to keep from breaking into hysterical laughter. He was also just bowed to by a prince, but he's seen more than a few important men—and at least two women—with their trousers around their ankles; the bow is somehow less imposing than what could well have happened to him had he not run into Kunzite first that night. 

“So you're the one who led us to our wayward enchantress,” the Prince remarks, and Zoisite bites his tongue and nods. The Prince's smile fades. “Kunzite said the two of you met in a traveling show.”

“Moons ago, sire, and neither of us by our own wishes,” Beryl says, when Zoisite realizes nothing is forthcoming from his own mouth. The Prince nods—once—slowly. There's still a smile playing around the edges of his mouth, but it's a solemn one, now; he knows he can't know, he with his fine palace and tutors and the love of a country to sustain him, what kind of lives brought them to stand in front of him with worn-out shoes and hair still growing in from violent men and lack of good food.

“Elysian owes you much,” he says, and Zoisite squares his shoulders to keep from shrinking away when the Prince puts a hand on his shoulder. “Name what you desire.”

Zoisite's eyes dart over his shoulder, meet Kunzite's behind him. Kunzite gives him a small nod, and he looks back again: into the face of the prince Endymion, last man on the whole earth round Zoisite would have ever expected to meet.

“I—should like to be permitted to see her again, sire,” he says, and Endymion's smile grows into a chuckle.

“I'd have it no other way,” he answers. “That's no request.”

Zoisite's tongue—so quick and sharp with the chaff herd in a tavvy—is a dead thing on the bottom of his mouth. _When you kill me, hang me_ comes to mind; the Prince is a kinder man than his father, and some of the punishments he's heard whispered in the dark rooms of bars make him shiver. But Beryl said nothing, and he can't speak without putting her in trouble's way. The less-dire thought _real boots_ follows; Zoisite's shoes are worn thin, there's a scrap of demonweed husk sewn into the bottom of one to keep his feet from the rain, and he hasn't yet gathered the courage to ask Kunzite how many hours of labor pay for new shoes. But he's here as Kunzite's ward, and such a request can only reflect poorly on him after more than three weeks of nothing but kindness. At last he glances back over Endymion's shoulder again.

“If it please my lord, he's been off the road not even a full moon,” Kunzite says, and Zoisite breathes a sigh of relief. “If you insist on offering a compensation for his friendly concern, it might be better received when he's more settled.”

“I understand. He's staying with you?”

“He is,” Kunzite answers. Zoisite feels Beryl squeeze his shoulder. Zoisite feels Endymion's attention return to him.

“Beryl said she remembered you first in the mountains,” he says. “It's little enough to go on, but it may be enough to find your family.”

“I have little enough care for them, sire,” Zoisite answers, and sees Endymion's eyes go wide. “Those few left would sooner have seen me dead and one less to feed. I made my way here, and if it please you, I intend to stay.”

The Prince only nods. Zoisite is pretty sure he's shocked him into silence. There's a loud gonging noise in the distance that saves them all from further embarrassment.

“It's late,” Endymion says. “I shouldn't detain you. And I have little doubt there are servants here ready to make quick work of the lady Beryl for the evening.”

Beryl grins. “I'd not be so quick to call me a lady, sire.”

“As close to one as I've seen,” Endymion says, and when Kunzite beckons Zoisite away, Zoisite makes a terrible face. Kunzite chuckles as he leads Zoisite out of the Great Hall.

“She could do worse for favor.”

Zoisite nods. Kunzite pulls off the cloak he wears over his jacket and wraps it around Zoisite's shoulders.

“I can't believe Nephrite let you out here in only that,” he comments. “You'll catch death in your teeth.”

“You're wearing only that,” Zoisite comments, but it doesn't stop him from burrowing farther into the cloak. If there's not frost by morning, he'll be shocked.

“I haven't been ill.”

They've traveled most of their way before Zoisite speaks again, and when he does, it's quiet. He supposes someday he might stop being afraid of the way he entered Kunzite's house, but that time hasn't yet come.

“I sat my evening in the kitchen.”

“And you're well?”

“I think so.”

“Then I can find out the start of the next class term whenever you're ready.” Kunzite pops the door latch and lets Zoisite in, lights the lamp and helps him shrug out of the cloak. “We're into cold months. It may not be until New Year.”

“Maybe by then I'll actually be able to write the alphabet without looking like a drunk.” The two jackets—dark official blue, faded marketplace green—hang companionably together on Kunzite's front rack, and for the first time Zoisite feels like maybe the second one _belongs_ there when he sees Kunzite absently smooth down the sleeves—that perhaps he adds something more to Kunzite's life than coffee ready in the mornings.

He toes out of his shoes and nudges them into place with one foot. Next to Kunzite's dayboots, they look like they belong to a child. Little wonder Kunzite took him for one. Kunzite puts his hands in the small of his back, stretches his shoulders. Zoisite hears something crack.

“It's well on to midnight. You should get to bed.”

Zoisite nods and makes for the hall's inner door, then pauses, one hand on the latch. “Kunzite?”

Kunzite stops fussing with his second jacket and looks up. 

“Why did they bring me to the palace?”

“She came with us only on the condition that she see you.”

Zoisite nods and opens the inner door. 

He hopes the dark feeling in his gut is only nerves.

\--------------------------

He's screaming before he even knows he's awake, and Kunzite is in his door with a lamp in one hand and his shortsword in the other before he knows he screamed.

“What is it?”

Zoisite's teeth chatter. Behind his eyes he can still hear the sound of a firebanger going off behind him, and this time the chunk of jagged metal thrown from the barrel didn't sing past his ear; this time, it buried itself in his shoulder, his bone, his heart. He hears the sound again and jumps, biting his tongue to hold in a shriek—not a firebanger, but thunder. He looks down, sure his arms and hands will be coated in red. The lamp flickers over nothing but a plain gray bedcover, and then Kunzite's own arms, a darker gray against the blanket. They're bare, Zoisite notes absently, and then he blinks and Kunzite's arms look the same dark nut-brown as always. He must have come on the run and lit the lamp too low. The thunder cracks again, and Zoisite bursts into tears in spite of himself. There's a long pause, and then Kunzite sits awkwardly on the side of the bed.

“Are you ill?”

Zoisite shakes his head. “Nightmare,” he manages, and after another moment more Kunzite rests the shortsword against the side of the bed and pulls Zoisite to his feet.

“Come,” he says, and guides Zoisite to the kitchen, where he's deposited on the wide hearth. Kunzite takes up the poker and coaxes the embers into a full flame before pulling a bottle of amber liquid out of the pantry and pouring some of it off into a cup. “Drink this.”

Zoisite obediently takes a mouthful of the liquid, then sputters and coughs and tries to spit it out. It burns his throat, his nose, his eyes. “ _What_ ,” he manages, and then he coughs again. Kunzite follows the liquid with a cold tea, and Zoisite sips it gratefully.

“Oak-liquor. For your nerves. I thought someone was being murdered.”

Zoisite chokes a little on his tea and shakes his head. Kunzite just stares at him, like he plans to sit all night if Zoisite doesn't say more.

“The—the caravan,” he says at last. “I dreamed I was there again. That's all.”

“You can throw that on the manure pile,” Kunzite tells him. “I've seen corpses that looked better than you.”

“Please,” he whispers, and then he shakes his head. If he has to come up with another lie to cover the first, he may well vomit. Kunzite says nothing, and Zoisite feels the words spill out like water without his consent:

“I killed someone.”

“Go on.”

The tone in Kunzite's voice suggests nothing more important than the possibility of rain, and in spite of himself, Zoisite does go on: two of their fellows dead, one of starvation and one of disease, as they found their way to towns where children were a lesser novelty and so couldn't earn their keep; a body left in the hay to rot, and the sores that began to appear no matter how carefully they tried to keep it away from their own progressively-filthier bedstraw; stealing the knife and, he claims, the keys, and breaking open the cage in the dark of night; the pursuit by one of the caravan fellows with a weighted weapon; stabbing him first in his overfed belly and, when he doubled over, slitting his throat to stop his yelling. By the time he's done his face is wet with tears, and so is his arm, where he's wiped them away again and again, and he doesn't so much stop as wind down, like one of the clever clockwork dolls he sees in the marketsquare. 

Kunzite is silent. Zoisite feels panic beating around his stomach like a small trapped bird. Finally Kunzite looks up from his beer.

“Is that all?”

Zoisite nearly screams insane laughter, and suspects the only thing stopping him is Kunzite's liquor. There are a multitude of appropriate responses to an admission of murder, and _is that all?_ isn't even close to one of them. He finally nods—once—a single jerk and his eyes back on his cup. Kunzite stretches out his legs as the thunder rolls.

“Here's how I see it,” he says, and puts his own cup aside. “I could arrest you now and take you to the Palace of Justice, and in a few days a quora would say you were clearly one of those wild faefolk who shouldn't be trusted, no knowing where you'd strike again, and you'd be dead by moon's-end. I could report you as human, of course, and if I did and they didn't test you, you'd be back here by the end of the week. Acquitted on all counts. But if they did test, and the results showed fae blood in you, you'd be dead and I'd be in the stock.” He reaches across the hearthstone and tips Zoisite's chin up with a finger. Zoisite forces himself to meet Kunzite's eyes. They blur and swim in his face. Zoisite's pretty sure it's not the fault of Kunzite's eyes that they won't stay in one place. “So allow me to ask you a judge's question. Do you believe, in the deepest part of you, that had you _not_ cut the man's throat, you would have died?”

Zoisite doesn't dare consider the idea too deeply. The nightmare is still too close to the surface of his mind; he can still smell rotting flesh and excrement.

And would the maggots that infested both eventually have made a meal of his eyes, as they did the red and festered whipcuts on his legs?

He nods, that same single jerk of the head. Kunzite sits back.

“Then we'll call it self-defense, and let him rot wherever the fellows left his body to lie. They never reported it, or I would have heard about it. Throat-slittings are rare enough to make gossip for years.”

“I _murdered_ \--”

Kunzite puts a finger on Zoisite's lips. “Do you know the definition of murder, Zoisite?”

“Killing someone.”

Kunzite shakes his head. “Murder has three parts. It means to kill someone without duress or remorse.”

“I—I don't know what that means.”

“It means you didn't murder anyone. You killed someone to protect yourself. There's quite a large difference.”

“He's still dead.”

“And you're alive, as is Beryl, and if I understand the situation correctly, your younger friend at least had a chance at life he wouldn't have had otherwise, and died in a clean bed. All things that would never have happened had you remained as you were. On the whole, I'd say Elysian's officers would sooner give you a medal than hang you for it. We don't look kindly on those who harm children.”

Overhead, the thunder cracks again. Zoisite jumps and bites down on a yelp. There's a long pause, and then Kunzite's arms fold around his shoulders in an awkward motion a little like grasshopper legs. Zoisite rests his face on Kunzite's cool shoulder and closes his eyes. The thunder can't possibly actually be softer, but it sounds it, somehow, and when Kunzite coaxes him off the hearthstone—probably to cart him back to his room, Zoisite supposes—he lets himself be pulled. Kunzite pauses them both at the kitchen door, then turns down the hallway and steers Zoisite into his own room.

“This kind of storm goes on until it's tired of it, and then it continues just for spite,” Kunzite comments. “You might as well stay in here where I can watch for you. I've shared before when I was splitting duty.”

Zoisite hesitates, then nods. He feels drained with the terrible secret out of him, tired in a way even the late hour and tumultuous evening can't entirely explain. Kunzite nods him to the bed and shakes out the covers he must have thrown to the floor when Zoisite started screaming, tosses them back over Zoisite's shoulders. Zoisite curls up into his usual tight little ball and buries his face in the blanket. He's safe. He thinks. He's not going to look to find out otherwise.

And then Kunzite draws the blanket the rest of the way over his head, and instead of rolling thunder, Zoisite hears crickets. Not a single lone cricket that might have sneaked into the room, either—it's a chorus that includes at least two frogs and an owl, the orchestra of a still summer night instead of an autumn thunderstorm.

He wakes only once more the whole night through, at the sudden creak and shift of the bed; and then a long back presses against his own, shifts a bit, and goes still. Right—he's in Kunzite's room. He peeks over the edge of the blanket into a room still thick and black, rain running against the windows and thunder so loud he can't imagine ever sleeping through it, Kunzite's head pillowed on his arm and a low, deep sound Zoisite is sure will eventually resolve itself into snores, skin an ashy gray in the dim, weird light from a sputtering streetlamp.

And then he ducks back under the blanket, and falls asleep again to the sounds of midsummer.

\----------------------------

His tongue tastes like a small creature crawled into his mouth last night and died there, and his head hurts. The floor rocks as he makes his way down the hall, arm outstretched, to the kitchen.

Kunzite's oak-liquor is far meaner than wine. He didn't have enough to vomit, though, apparently, and that's always a good start to the morning. 

Kunzite is back-to, sitting by the pantry and apparently pondering the gray square of dim light that's the kitchen window. It's a wash of rain and darker sludge Zoisite imagines must be coming down from the roof tiles. Beyond, the alley is a sea of mud. 

“No duty today,” Kunzite comments. “There's naught but idiots outside right now.” 

“So this is kusita?” Zoisite's heard stories of the legendary autumn storms far to the north of the Alliance, but he's never been so far north as to live through one. Kunzite grunts. Zoisite bites his lip, shifts guiltily where he stands. 

“Ah,” he manages, and it sounds stupid, but it's better than a month ago, words locked up in his throat never to come out. “I mean—last night . . . “

Kunzite stays silent.

“I'm sorry for waking you. And—thank you. For . . . you know.” He means it for Kunzite's taking on of his secret, of course—his counsel and his comfort. But more: Kunzite could could have been unkind—indeed, outright cruel. Instead, Zoisite woke up this morning to the sound of birds under the blanket over his head.

“It was nothing.”

Kunzite's back is still turned, and Zoisite finds himself nibbling on a thumbnail without meaning to. Kunzite is good at paying attention to the most ridiculous things for long amounts of time, but this is the first time Zoisite can remember Kunzite actively ignoring his presence.

“Have—I displeased you?”

“No.” 

There's a long pause, and finally Zoisite leaves the doorway to get coffee, trying to ignore the sting of Kunzite's dismissal. There's a sigh behind him.

“You entrusted me last night with the secret of your heart,” Kunzite says, still facing the window. “I suppose it's time I do the same.”

“You don't have to.”

“You'd discover me sooner or later, and I'd rather have the choice.” Kunzite slides off his stool. “Don't be frightened.”

“I'm not frightened of you.” Kunzite might, Zoisite reflects, be the only man in the world who can stake that claim—but, he's surprised to realize, it's a true one.

And then Kunzite turns around.

His face and hands and neck are a strange bluish-black, like dried river clay; his white hair is whiter still in the light of the lamp, and his thin lips have filled out enough to make the most beautiful of women jealous. On his first day in this house, Zoisite found Kunzite's icy-blue eyes hard to meet; the ones he sees now, he thinks, would have sent him into a faint. There are no whites—only black all through—and speckled in the blackness are entire constellations.

There is, Zoisite realizes, very literally a sky in Kunzite's eyes, and he holds back both a gasp and the first words that spring to his lips, because saying _please don't kill me_ is a good way to be sure it happens, those strange, multiknuckled fingers wrapped around his throat.

“You're Darkfae.”

“Yes.”

“And you—you don't _actually_ eat people's souls,” he hazards. The side of Kunzite's strange new mouth twitches in quite possibly the closest thing to a smile Zoisite has ever seen from him.

“Do you steal away children and leave monsters in their place so you can feast on the bones?”

Zoisite feels his mouth drop open of its own accord. “No! I don't—that's a myth, I don't even know if I—oh.” He can feel his fingernails digging into his elbow and makes himself stop. “You mean if the things they say about people like me aren't true then I shouldn't believe them about you, either.”

“If there's one thing I hope for Endymion's reign, it's that he finally brings an end to the propaganda against the Faefolk,” Kunzite comments. Zoisite sees his normal—no—his _usual_ skin color, Zoisite supposes—ripple over his arms and fade out again. “I told you once I was more fortunate. I should tell you I say so because I came from a family that didn't need to sell me into slavery to survive. We lived far enough into the country the King's policies didn't much affect us.” He looks out the window and sighs again. “It's the storm. And the tiredness of the chase catching up to me, I suppose. Your Beryl could teach our soldiers a few things.”

“You wasted your magic on me last night.”

“And yet, I think you slept sounder than you had since you came under my roof. I'd hardly call that a waste.”

“But now you can't—“ Zoisite hesitates. It's frustrating, he's finding—now that he actually has someone to talk to, he's discovering just how few words he knows. 

“Glammer,” Kunzite says. “That's what you're thinking of. And I could, if I concentrated. But this—“ He gestures toward the window and shrugs. Zoisite shrugs back, takes a sip of his coffee, and then almost spits it back out.

“That's your energy tie,” he says. “You feed on it. That _is_ true.”

“It is,” Kunzite agrees. “It's harder to contain, at times like this.” He blinks, and Zoisite is suddenly aware of how _different_ the gesture is when Kunzite looks like this—his eyes close more slowly, and Zoisite is pretty sure he sees a second eyelid under the first. For walking in daylight. Of course. “There's no point trying to get much of anything done today in the way of housework. Keep the fire lit for yourself, if you like. I have a slate written out for you.”

“Thank you.”

“Mm. I'll work on reports, I suppose. There's one thing to be grateful for, in weather like this, there won't be any more piling up.”

Zoisite's done with his coffee and bread before he picks up the slate. There's a line written across it for him to copy, and after several minutes of puzzling he works out the sentence _I am a subject in the service of Endymion, son-King of Elysian._ There are five different _au_ s in it, and Zoisite groans. _Au_ can sleep with the dogs.

And then he realizes there are four lines. Another ten minutes finds him wiping away tears.

_Duress: to be forced to act against one's own desires._

_Remorse: to feel badly for having done something._

_It wasn't your fault._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is no good way to translate Kunzite's skin color into non-modern metaphors. In my head, he looks like a living photo negative. Your mileage may vary.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Politics. Drunk guards. Strange dreams. And yet somehow, Zoisite is happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LITERALLY NOTHING FOR ONCE NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING OH MY GOD
> 
> Oh wait, one thing. Blackapples are not actually a real thing. The idea here is that there are fruits, plants, animals, etc. that have gone extinct between Elysian and now, and this is one of them. Shame, really, I imagine them being rather sweet.

“What do you think you're doing up there?”

“Blackapples are ripe,” Zoisite comments, and drops one very nearly on Beryl's head. She lets out a noise like an angry sneezing cat and swarms up the tree next to him, long skirts and petticoats or no, and snatches a second one out of his hand before he can bite it. “Hey!”

“Serves you right, throwing fruit at my head,” she retorts, and takes a bite that doesn't even begin to approach ladylike. Juice runs down her chin. “What are you doing in the courtyard, anyway?”

“Kunzite brought me.”

“What's _he_ doing in the courtyard?”

“Talking to the prince.” Zoisite finds another apple and tears into it. 

“And you didn't come to see me? I'm wounded.”

“Endymion said you were in lessons.”

“They want me to learn _history_. Ugh.”

“And by 'they,' you mean . . . ?”

“The King. And Endymion.” Beryl sighs. Zoisite sticks his tongue out. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Your lessons.” 

Zoisite shrugs. “Kunzite brought me a book about the woman who founded the city. Stories about her knights, and things.” He looks down at the apple in his hands, suddenly no longer hungry. Beryl prods him.

“And?”

“And . . . ?”

She swings a leg over the tree branch, feet dangling down on either side and skirts hiked to her knees. “You're not telling me something, Zoisite, I can tell.”

He shakes his head. “Kunzite knows. Mostly. He thinks it was only me.” Or at least, Zoisite amends in his head, Kunzite hasn't said he knows Zoisite was lying about stealing the keys. He has the decided feeling that Kunzite does know, but he also has the feeling Kunzite's made a tragicomic error and assumed it was Dodi who took the keys or picked the lock, that Zoisite lied out of respect for a dead child no longer able to speak for himself. Either way, it doesn't matter—Beryl's name hasn't even come up, and Zoisite is just fine with that. “He told me it counts as self-defense. He won't even publish it for trial.”

“That's . . . good, I suppose,” Beryl says. Her own apple sits in her hand, only half-eaten. “You're sure?”

“I'm sure.” He stares down at the skin on his own fruit. It looks remarkably similar to Kunzite's, when he's not using a glam. Beryl stares at him.

“Something else is bothering you.”

“It's not mine to tell.”

“Kunzite?”

“Mm.” 

Beryl's lips pinch together. “Did he hurt you?”

Zoisite drops his apple in shock. “ _What?_ ”

“You know what I'm talking about.”

Zoisite makes a disgusted face. Trying to imagine Kunzite as one of the myriad faceless men from countless taverns is like trying to imagine a spider in a bite of pie—he could, he supposes, but one doesn't belong with the other and he can't imagine why he'd _want_ to. “No.”

“On your word?”

“On my word.”

“Because I'll argue with Endymion if I need to, you can stay in the palace with me—“

“I'm _fine_. He hasn't touched a hair of me.” Not strictly true, Zoisite supposes. The second time he dreamt of the caravan he went to the kitchen and found Kunzite reading on the hearth, and when he crept into the empty space under Kunzite's arm, he was allowed to stay long enough to fall asleep sitting up with Kunzite's hand caught absently in his hair. But he woke up in his own bed with the covers tucked neatly up around his shoulders, so by the measurestick Beryl is worried about, it's close enough. And since then the nightmare hasn't returned—although Zoisite supposes a week is too short a time to declare a success—so by his own measure, truer still. “It's still not mine to tell.”

“ _Why?_ ”

“Because . . . “ Zoisite hesitates. But he's done too much spilling of other people's secrets lately, and at last he shakes his head. Kunzite can talk about self-defense, but if word of his true self reached Endymion, Zoisite imagines they'd both be dead by nightfall. “Because things are different now, that's all.”

Beryl makes a vaguely offended noise. “Endymion courts me, he doesn't _own_ me,” she says, and Zoisite snorts. 

“Imagine him trying,” he retorts, and they both laugh darkly enough to startle a servant walking across the yard. Zoisite waves at her. “So he _does_ court you.”

“Half the palace thinks you do, too,” she tells him, and Zoisite makes a terrible face. 

“Please tell me you're telling them better,” he pleads, and Beryl throws back her head and laughs. Zoisite pouts.

“It's a good thing I love you or I'd push you right off this branch _right now_ ,” he tells her, and she snickers. “I would. It'd serve you right.”

“Endymion thinks it's a frolic,” she says. “One of the other servants asked him if she might make you up a _separate_ bed, just so, when you were coming last week and he laughed til he cried. I wouldn't let him think it.”

“You'd best not. I don't fancy the end of a rope for you,” he tells her, and then looks up. “They're done already?”

“Hm?”

Zoisite points. Across the courtyard, he sees Kunzite and Nephrite standing with Endymion. Kunzite is gesturing. Nephrite is standing in a way Zoisite is pretty sure constitutes pretending not to care. “Don't they do all the important things inside?”

“I don't know. I'm supposed to be in lessons. And eating. Tell Kunzite to feed you more,” she chastises, and pokes Zoisite in the belly. “You still look ready to fall over in a high wind.”

“Untrue,” he protests. “I'm so much bigger I had to get a different undershirt.” He makes a face down at his chest, grateful Kunzite allowed him the loan of a shirt while his undergarment dries from the laundry. “And I got taller.”

“You should still eat more,” she says. “Help me down.”

“Help yourself down!”

“I'm in a skirt!”

“You climbed up here!”

Beryl lets out a huff and drops out of the tree. She lands in an undignified cloud of petticoats and skirts and hair, then wrinkles her nose when Zoisite drops nimbly beside her. A dark hand appears in front of her, and she takes it. Kunzite lifts her to her feet.

“It's no way to treat a lady,” he says, and Zoisite rolls his eyes.

“She's no lady.”

“And you're no gentleman,” Beryl says, and snags his hand before he can poke her. “What matters with my lord?”

Kunzite smiles his invisible smile. “Nothing important,” he answers, and turns his eyes to Zoisite. “Will you stay?”

Zoisite looks at Beryl. She shrugs. “I've lessons to finish. _History,_ ” she adds, and Kunzite lets out an amused snort. 

“Mind it well and don't repeat it,” he tells her, and nods at Zoisite. Zoisite glances across the courtyard, where Endymion is watching them with an amused smile, and rolls his eyes before making a show of standing on his toes to kiss Beryl's cheek. She lets out a groan and shoves him, and he elbows her in the side. Kunzite touches his forehead and leads Zoisite away. 

“Why is it so important you had to tell Beryl it's not important?”

“It's not, in the whole scheme of things. What do you know about the Silver Kingdom?”

“I know it's on the moon and people there do magic.”

Kunzite lets out the kind of grunt Zoisite's come to parse as _I heard you._ “Then let me fill you in on the politics. The Silver Kingdom is the center of a much larger alliance that comprises multiple planets, much as Elysian forms the center of our Alliance here on Earth. The last attempt at Earth's joining that alliance was about sixty years ago, and it was disastrous, to say the least. Sixteen members of the Queen's court were banished to remain here after an assassination coup against her was discovered. The King claimed she had no jurisdiction for banishment, and the wind-up of the whole thing was a ban on travel between Earth and Moon because of the weak bonds between Earth's countries and bad blood in general. It set us back very possibly by centuries. Ten years after the whole affair the queen Serenity of Nikkal was crowned and only in the last year or so have there been talks of a new attempt. The King of Elysian now is the grandson of the King who caused the original mess and there are talks of introducing Endymion to the Princess to see if we can move forward with an alliance at last.”

“He's courting Beryl.”

“And well he might. She's a lovely young woman. That doesn't change the need for him to know his allies.” Kunzite smiles his invisible smile again. “I hear tell he's not the only one.” 

Zoisite lets out the loudest groan he can manage and makes a hideous face, and Kunzite, for a wonder, actually _laughs_. 

“Ugh, you're all disgusting!”

Kunzite laughs harder, finally stops walking altogether and holds himself up against a lamppost as Zoisite wails.

“Kunziiiiiite!”

Zoisite sees tears standing in the corners of Kunzite's eyes and stops whining at once. Kunzite wipes his eyes with the heel of his hand and winds down to chuckles.

“You shouldn't be so easily-led,” he comments. “Don't look at me like that. You must know it's true. If you think that's so terrible, you should hear the servants. One told me today the two of you have an _incredibly_ elaborate code where it only sounds like you're discussing prices from the marketplace, and in fact you're setting up 'the most sinful assignations.'”

Zoisite makes a disgusted noise. Kunzite chuckles and shakes his head. 

“As I was saying. There's talk of Earth joining the Silver Alliance, and the Queen is supposed to come with a delegation come midwinter. In light of the work we did locating Beryl, Endymion wants my team on security detail.” 

“You look happy.”

“I was a little older than you when I joined the guard, and a palace assignment was all I wanted. It meant the opportunity to change things.” He glances at Zoisite from the corner of his eye. “It may mean you'll have to do without me for a few weeks. The palace guard has different training and I won't be working evenings.”

“I'll be all right.” Zoisite tries to imagine Kunzite his own age, chubby-cheeked and shorter with his hair forever in his face, and finds himself unable. He wonders what Darkfae children look like. And then he realizes, suddenly, what Kunzite said, and looks down at his shoes. They're new, and cost him a pair of scoldings—one from Beryl when she replaced the worn ones on his feet, and one from Kunzite for not telling him about the holes in the old ones Zoisite had tried so hard to hide. Kunzite puts a hand on his shoulder.

“I'm taking Nephrite and Jadeite for drinks tonight,” he says. “To celebrate. I won't buy your liquor, but you're welcome to join us.”

Zoisite makes a terrible face. “ _I_ wouldn't buy my liquor,” he says, and Kunzite lets out that amused snort again. Zoisite bites his lip. “I don't want to be trouble.”

“I wouldn't invite you if I thought you'd be trouble,” Kunzite comments. “If you think you'd like to come, you'd best sleep this afternoon.”

\--------------------------------

Running, again.

Out the bars, down the row of beaten dirt between the cages and tents, shouting behind him, the whistle and pop of firebangers, air cold and biting on his naked chest and frost pricking the bottoms of his feet. A bullet flies past his ear; he feels it singe off a piece of his hair as it goes. There's a knife in his hand, and he's going to have to use it, whether he wants to or not; he's faster than the others, but not as fast as he could be, he who's never run more than a tent's length and lives his life in chains.

Something black sweeps over his line of sight, and he cries out in spite of himself. The something resolves itself into an arm and settles around his chest and shoulders. It's the way Beryl used to hold him in the caravan, or would be if Beryl had been big enough to practically engulf him. Something soft and warm drapes around him, and the bitter cold under his feet warms.

The sound of bullets stops. A dark hand takes his knife, but gently, and he lets it go. He wriggles in the embrace so he can turn to face his defender— _who are you? What did you do?_ —

—and he very nearly lands on his face, bedclothes tangled around his legs. At some point in the night he rolled near enough the edge of the mattress for a single toss to leave him halfway on the floor. He blows his curls off his face, irritated at the tickling, and kicks the blanket until he's free of it.

He's awake and it's still dark outside, but—

—but, he realizes, he's not sweating. He's not _afraid_. He's just awake. He nearly fell off the bed, but after ten years sleeping on a floor he's resigned to the idea he's probably never going to actually stay properly in a bed; falling off it is nothing new.

He pads out of the room, spots a light in the kitchen and heads for it, wondering absently if Kunzite is ill. He's pretty sure Jadeite is the only one who actually got sick before they made their separate ways home last night, but Kunzite wasn't sipping tea, either. 

He also wasn't complaining that Zoisite glued himself to Kunzite's side and stayed there the evening through, for which Zoisite may need to be eternally grateful. He's not blind; had he been more comfortable alone in a drunken Nephrite's presence he might have pointed out the women giggling at Kunzite from the other end of the bar.

“You're up early.”

“Just dreams.”

Kunzite looks back out the window. The frost over the ground, Zoisite thinks, looks more like Kunzite's skin than anything else he's ever seen. Something in his mind tries to connect _frost_ and _Kunzite_ in a second way, but when he tries to seize on it, it vanishes. Ugh.

“I marked out another chapter for you for the day. Don't try to read more than your eyes will take. The words aren't going anywhere.”

“I know.” Zoisite considers coffee. He pours himself some of the cream in the pantry, instead. Kunzite snorts, and Zoisite sticks out his tongue to lick off the rind of cream left over his lip. 

“They sell mixed milk in the marketplace,” Kunzite comments. Zoisite gulps his mouthful.

“I know, but this is better.”

“I've adopted a hedonist,” Kunzite says, and stands up. “Take more rest if you need it. We were out late.”

“You're going already?”

“There's a lesson every good guardmember learns early and every bad soldier repeats for life,” Kunzite tells him. “Nephrite and Jadeite are about to learn it, I think.”

“What is it?”

“If you drink until you're making food for the street dogs, save it for your days off.”

Zoisite makes a face. Kunzite chuckles and makes for the kitchen door.

“Wait!”

Kunzite pauses. Zoisite sways a little, not even sure when he got to his feet. He hugs his elbows, tries to remember what seemed so important. Then he crosses the room and wraps his arms stiffly around Kunzite's waist.

There's a pause long enough for him to very nearly draw back, stammering apologies. And then Kunzite folds his arms just as awkwardly around Zoisite's shoulders. It still reminds Zoisite of grasshopper legs, and vaguely of something else he can't place.

“Thank you for taking me with you.”

“We enjoyed your company and your good wishes.”

Zoisite isn't sure which of them lets go first; they might, he thinks, even drop their arms at the same time. 

It's still a comfort, though, as he watches Kunzite march off through the dim predawn grayblue air and thick frost, boots breaking through to cold, half-frozen mud. 

It's still good to be hugged by someone from the outside world.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zoisite's new life truly begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY THIS HAS TAKEN SO LONG. BUT IT IS HERE NOW. PLEASE ENJOY.

“You! Hi! In the road!”

Zoisite clamps his book to his chest and turns in the direction of the shout. There's an old woman standing in her door, and he's pretty sure it's him she's waving at. He stares over his own hunched shoulder out of habit anyway.

“You! Kunzite's kid!”

Zoisite bites his lip and creeps toward her gate. She's even smaller than he, and her legs look—Zoisite tries to think of a comparison. It's what he's supposed to be doing for homework. 

They look _croggled_ , he thinks at last. He's not even sure it's a word, and it's certainly not what he's supposed to be doing, but that is, in fact, what they look like. She can't run to follow him. He's not even sure she can walk with any kind of surety. At last he unlatches the gate and slinks inside.

“Come on, come on,” she says, and he increases his pace from creep to plod. 

“Sa'ti?”

The woman barks out a single laugh. She's probably not actually anyone's grandmother. It was a stupid thing to say. But he doesn't know if she's ever been married—he can't very well call her _tita_.

“You went to town this morning,” she says, and Zoisite forces himself not to look back at the road. It's rude. 

“Yes,” he agrees, and forces his fingers to relax on the book's spine before he can break it. “I go for school.”

“In this weather?”

“It's only three hours,” he tells her. It's true; the longer school days will pick up after new year, when there are flowers on the trees again; for now it's just him and a child embarrassingly younger than he and a single teacher, mastering the last bits of writing and stringing together syllables before they'll join the main class. The woman in front of him grunts.

“That bag with you,” she says, and nods at his hip. Zoisite touches it, resists the urge to tangle his fingers in the fabric. “That's your shopping.”

“It saves time, sa'ti.”

“You go to this crazy teacher of yours every day?”

“Most.”

“And you sit in the cold and write your letters?”

“She says it's improper for her to take a male student home.”

“Huh.” She stares at him—up, down, taking in his clothes and hair and possibly the bracelet around his wrist—and then spits something into the snow. He's pretty sure it wasn't intended to be an insult; the spit was preceded by a terrible wheeze and a cough that sounded like it came from her very bowels. “I wondered. Do you go tomorrow?”

“Yes, sa'ti.” This time he does look back at the road, practically before he can catch himself doing it. 

“You want to get on for your meal, I imagine,” she says. “I'll tell you why I stopped you. I'll give you two silver to stop in the marketsquare for me tomorrow. I can't go in this weather.”

Privately, Zoisite suspects she's not much for going any time; there's a thick walking stick in her hand, and he imagines she'd need another to actually have any kind of stability. He doesn't say so.

“I—I'm sorry, I don't know,” he manages, at last. “I can ask Kunzite if it's all right and tell you—“

She lets out a short cackle that turns into breathless coughing, pounds her own chest, cocks her head to look up at him again. He wonders if she can actually turn her head, or if her neck is as gnarled as her fingers. “I'm up early,” she says. “You just come knock tomorrow.”

“I will, sa'ti,” he tells her, and then he can't stand it anymore. “But I shouldn't keep you—“

“Don't you mind that, it's been ten years since I got through a winter without it,” she says. “It takes more than a little cold to kill me. But this is more than a little cold. You understand.”

Zoisite does. There's talk of actually closing the marketsquare this weekend; the water in the fountain is already frozen solid. 

“Yes, sa'ti.”

“You go eat,” she tells him. “Only three hours. In those clothes. In this weather.” 

She keeps on muttering as she shoos him back down her path. 

Zoisite surprises himself by smiling.

\--------------

Kunzite is waiting at the kitchen door with a blanket when Zoisite comes in. He pulls off Zoisite's cloak without preamble and tugs the rawhide out of Zoisite's hair so he can shake loose the snow powdered over it. “Shirt too,” he says, and as Zoisite struggles out of his jacket and the two shirts beneath Kunzite wraps the blanket around him. It's warm; he must have strung it up by the fire. 

“Don't forget your trousers. Come sit. There's soup.”

“I have to take my stuff to my—”

“You can get it later,” Kunzite tells him. “Get warm.”

Zoisite sits by the fire, bare beneath the blanket, and sips at his soup. Kunzite gets to one knee and picks up each of his feet in turn, examining them and pressing his thumb into a few different spots.

“If you're really going to insist on going tomorrow, I want you to wear a second pair of socks. You can take my spare boots,” he says, and rubs Zoisite's toes. It hurts, and Zoisite tries to curl them away until he realizes all he's doing is making life harder for himself. “It's too cold for shoes.” At last he reaches up onto the hearth and pulls down a thick pair of socks sitting there, tugs them over Zoisite's feet. They're deliciously warm, and warmer still after Kunzite pulls the ends of the blanket down and tucks them under Zoisite's feet before reaching for one of his hands and starting the process over—pressing his palm, fingers, enveloping the whole between his own hands to warm it. “You'll need to get your things from your room tonight. We'll sleep in here.”

“In the _kitchen?_ ”

“It's warmer,” Kunzite says, and takes Zoisite's bowl. He replaces it with a cup of hot coffee. “We could both sleep in my room and leave the door open. But I won't have you in a closed room with only its own grate for warmth. The fireplace in there is too small and if it goes out you'd take your life in your hands. I've never seen a cold snap like this.”

Zoisite considers both options, briefly, and then decides he'll decide later. “There was a woman waiting for me on my way back today.”

Kunzite sits on the hearth with his own cup. “Oh?”

“An old woman,” Zoisite agrees. “She lives on the corner.”

“Tyaina,” Kunzite says, and takes a long drink. “Did she speak to you?”

“She asked if I might get her groceries tomorrow,” Zoisite answers, and yawns. The heat from the warmed clothes Kunzite keeps for him on lesson days is wonderful, but tiring. “On my way back from town. I told her I'd ask you.”

Kunzite grunts. “It's your time, to do with as you please,” he says. “I'd caution you against staying too long in the marketsquare tomorrow if it's as bad as it is today.”

Zoisite nods. He's already questioning the relative wisdom of trying to study tomorrow when there were little white spots on his fingers after trying to write his questions today. 

He yawns again, and Kunzite casts a critical eye over him before standing up.

“I'll get your clothes,” he says at last. “You were up early. Take a nap.”

“I have homework,” Zoisite protests. “And there's dishes.”

Kunzite shrugs. “And there's snow to be had before morning,” he adds. “We won't be going anywhere tonight.”

Zoisite wants to protest again. But the hearthstone is warm, and sleep tonight is likely to be elusive, and Kunzite has a point—they can do the dishes as easily an hour from now.

And so he lies down in front of the hearth—not on it, more's the pity, but he doesn't trust himself not to roll into the fire—and puts his arm under his head, tucking the blanket as far around him as he can.

By the time Kunzite gets back in with his half-frozen clothes, he's already sleeping.

\-----------------------------------

The knock on the door is louder than he meant it to be, and Zoisite yanks his hands behind his back so fast he almost falls into a pile of fresh snow. It doesn't look that loud, he thinks, when Kunzite does it. 

There's a loud clunk from inside, and then nothing. He waits, waits longer, finally raises his hand and knocks again—softer this time—and blows on his fingers.

There's an indistinct shout, and another small wait, and then the door creaks open. An eye peers out, and then the mouth hidden in a network of wrinkles below it opens in surprise.

“I didn't think you'd be here,” says Tyaina. She jerks her head and opens the door as far as Zoisite assumes she can. He glances back at the high road from the corner of his eye as he steps inside.

There's a bench inside, and a pair of thick canes next to it; Zoisite finds he's not surprised he was right. Tyaina takes one in each hand and jerks her head toward the door into the back of the house. Zoisite reseats his bag on his shoulder and hesitates.

“My boots—” he says, and she snorts.

“No wood floor here,” she says. “This is all old building. The stones dry fast.” Zoisite hesitates, but she nods her head again, and at last he goes.

“You're getting a late start,” she comments, and Zoisite shakes his head.

“Ati'ta wasn't at the fountain this morning,” he tells her. “And a lot of the stalls were blocked up. Nobody wanted to be out after the blizzard, I guess.”

“Then you're on your way back already.”

Zoisite makes a noise of agreement. “There wasn't much open in the marketsquare, but the bazaar was going,” he tells her. “Some of it, anyway.” He hoists the bag onto her kitchen table. “I got what I could. There's still a lot snowed under.” 

Tyaina tips the bag with an elbow, and Zoisite very nearly curses at himself. Of course she can't reach it with both hands on her canes—stupid. The two loaves of bread he put on top tumble out, and Zoisite's hand shoots out to stop a heavy winter melon from coming down right on top of them. It's not an impressive grocery trip, as groceries go—bread, fruit, stewmeat wrapped in thick brown paper, rice—but it's enough to carry her until the marketsquare opens again, and he says so—nervously, but he says it all the same. She looks up at him and—it's a grin, he thinks. He's pretty sure. Tyaina's face is like a walnut in color, shape, and vital characteristics, and determining what her mouth is supposed to be doing is nearly impossible.

“More than I could carry,” she tells him, and then glances at his hands. “You're a quick one.”

“You have to be when you live on the road,” he says, and she lets out a _huh._

“I haven't gotten that much in years,” she says. “How much did they take you, a week's in gold?”

“Sixteen silver,” he tells her, and watches her tufted eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. “Kunzite said not to worry about it if it's too much, it's not a—”

“Sixteen silver,” she interrupts. “Sixteen silver. Where did you learn to haggle like that?”

He touches his eye with two fingers, flicks them off to the side—something he picked up from Jadeite, he thinks. Something of the city. _I don't know._ “Comes naturally, I guess.”

“Huh,” she says again, and hobbles off across the kitchen to take what can only be her coin jar. Zoisite puts the melon back on the table.

“I can put it away, sa'ti,” he tells her, and she lets out another snort as she digs around the coin jar.

“Fresh meat? It'll be dinner,” she answers. “Just as well, there's only so many potatoes one person can take.” She makes her way back to the table with her second cane tucked under her arm and her hand full of silver. “And don't you give me any of these officer manners about charity. I'd have given you money this morning if you'd stopped.” She grabs his hand and counts out three silver into his palm before he can even pull back in surprise, and then he can't do anything else without being rude, and so he waits until she closes his fingers over the coins.

“Do you have a purse?”

“I don't, sa'ti,” he tells her. “My pockets do me just fine.”

At this point, he thinks, perhaps Tyaina was a bull in her last life, with all the snorting she does by way of conversation. 

“Don't you go losing it,” she tells him. “Are you expected home?”

“Kunzite told me to come straight on if the square was closed,” he says. “He's worried about my face.” There are mufflers, and Kunzite even offered him one before letting him leave, but Zoisite couldn't stand the tightness around his neck and mouth, and very nearly tore it trying to get it back off. Tyaina stares at his face.

“Well, there's no deadfrost in your cheeks yet,” she tells him. “But he's right, it'd be a shame to lose something so pretty. Save that for marriage.”

He's pretty sure it's supposed to be a joke, and he does his best to sound amused as she leads him back to the door.

“You're not a bad boy,” she says, before opening the door into the front hall. “Not like some of them. You stay that way, do you hear me?”

“I try, sa'ti,” he answers.

He's halfway home before he remembers he left the bag. _Shit._

He pauses, then shakes his head and keeps going.

There'll probably be another trip another day, and he can pick it up later.

\----------------

Kunzite is waiting with a blanket again. This time he strips Zoisite out of his jacket and wraps the blanket around his shoulders before getting to one knee and tugging on one of the boots. There are four pairs of socks underneath them, and they're tight.

“The marketsquare was closed, then?”

“Mostly,” Zoisite agrees, and lets Kunzite lead him into the kitchen. “And you were right, the extra underwear helped.”

“I'd still prefer you stay inside tonight,” Kunzite comments, as Zoisite struggles out of his snowy leggings in front of the hearthstone. “The guard isn't even bothering to send out full patrols. There are men around the palace, nothing more. It's too cold to be safe.”

“Are we staying in the kitchen again?”

“I think it's likely.”

Zoisite nods and takes the coffee Kunzite hands him. He slept better than he thought he would, Kunzite's feather tick laid on a blanket on the kitchen floor with the combined weight of every other blanket in the house atop them. Kunzite snores like one of the great steam engines under the city, and in the noise Zoisite can hear a long-ago broken nose that never healed. But it sounds familiar, a louder version of the grunts and sighs that issue forth when Kunzite reads, and it was enough to lull him back to sleep when he woke sometime after moonset. 

He wouldn't necessarily say he likes sharing a bed, but the shared body heat was nice.

“Were you able to get bread, at least?”

“And meat,” Zoisite agrees. “And Ziban was open.”

“Ziban would open if someone hung a sign saying the marketsquare was closed due to a dimensional rift straight into the pits of hell,” Kunzite comments, and Zoisite snorts laughter into his cup. “Was it useful to her?”

“She said she'd make soup tonight.”

Kunzite makes a sound Zoisite's learned to interpret as his version of _very good_ , and then Zoisite bolts upright and puts down his coffee so he can rummage in his pocket.

“She told me she wasn't going to let me give her anything,” he says, and dumps a handful of small silver pieces into Kunzite's hand. “There should be thirty-two.”

“I gave you thirty.”

“She said she'd give me two, remember?”

Kunzite shakes his head and pockets the coins. Then he reaches for Zoisite's hand, opens it, puts two of the coins back in his palm. Zoisite stares, first at the coins, and then at Kunzite.

“That money is yours,” Kunzite tells him. “Buy yourself something when the marketsquare reopens. Or save it up, it's not mine to tell you what to do with it.”

Zoisite feels his mouth drop open. If Kunzite notices, he doesn't comment. 

“I—but I had to _borrow money_ ,” Zoisite protests. “There's interest—”

“Oh, a whole morning's worth,” Kunzite agrees. “It's lucky you returned my pocket change or I might have starved. The wage promised to you is yours, Zoisite. Nobody has the right to take it from you.”

Zoisite bites his lip. “What do I do with it?”

“Put it up, and spend it when you care to,” Kunzite tells him. Zoisite wonders where in his room he's supposed to keep money. There's a shelf beside his window that might work for now; it's not a shared room, after all. “Did she say she'd need you again?”

Zoisite shakes his head. “But she can't possibly get to town in the snow, Kunzite, her legs are—” He draws a wobbly shape in the air with one hand. “There's no way.”

“She might offer you pay to keep her laid in for the winter,” Kunzite comments. “There's a trader in town who puts money toward things coming in, going out, you could put five silver into lumber and see what happens. It's not a bad lesson to learn.” 

“Did you ever put five silver into lumber?”

“I put gold on grain the year I was seventeen,” Kunzite tells him. “That's why I say five silver on lumber.”

Zoisite laughs until his eyes water. Kunzite offers him an invisible smile, puts a hand on his shoulder and then stands up. 

“I'm going to pull in some work from the front,” he says. “If the door's not frozen shut.”

Zoisite sits with the blanket around his shoulders long after Kunzite's gone, the sound of shuffling papers and desk drawers a distant echo compared to the tiny clink of silver on silver in his hand. He's had money before, of course—earned on his back or his knees, and as quickly spent on food or lodging. In those days he couldn't have spared a silver for a book even if he'd been able to read it.

Two silver isn't much compared to what he could make face-first against a wall, but it feels different from that kind of money—the kind of thing he could happily put toward a bauble or a gift without having to turn his face to the ground.

He flips one of the coins with his thumb. It lands squarely in the middle of the other one, edge on face. _Tink._

Then he looks back up at the door.

This money is his.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The royal visit commences, and Zoisite may upset the course of intergalactic relations for years to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY, MY LOVELIES. Thank you for waiting, if you're still here. Here's the skinny:
> 
> I've struggled with depression for years, and over Christmas I had a very bad crash that sapped my ability to do a whole lot of anything. At one point I curled up in my chair and just sat there with my eyes closed because looking at things was too much of an effort. 
> 
> Coming back from that creatively has been hard, and every new word on this chapter was a struggle. But here it is! Roadblock overcome! On to the next one, hopefully with significantly less delay! Please enjoy this chapter's hijinks, because the next one promises to not be happy at all.

“They all look so . . . ”

“Pale,” Beryl finishes for him, peeking down through the fancy iron rails at the top of the staircase. Although, Zoisite thinks, “peek” isn't really a word for Beryl anymore, in her elegant wine-colored dress and fancy necklace, a tiara shining discreetly in her hair. To Zoisite, the necklace looks uncomfortably like a collar, and thinking about wearing it makes him shudder. 

Then again, nobody was ever able to collar Beryl.

He shakes his head to rid it of the thought and looks back down at the incoming processional and wrinkles his nose. “That's one word for it, I guess.” To him, the visitors from the Silver Kingdom look like fishbellies—a shimmering but somehow dead white that puts him uncomfortably in mind of old bones. There are pale people in Elysian-town, but even then most of them are burned darker by the sun, and have lifeblood to show in their faces; the Moon delegation is as uniformly white as the lard Kunzite keeps in the pantry. Zoisite has only ever seen one person in his entire life who looked like the courtiers below him; she was in the caravan, and painted her face with lead. 

There's a small commotion in the hall, and a woman in cream and gold and a tiara made of pearls glides in—at least, Zoisite assumes it's a woman. Her bunned and tailed cobweb-colored hair seems longer than male vanity would allow—held up by a pair of servants, it must certainly trail on the floor when left to its own devices—and even under the heavy winter dress her shape is even more slender than Zoisite's own. Beryl gasps and seizes Zoisite's hand in a tight grip.

“That's her,” she whispers. Zoisite glances at her, confused. “That's Queen Serenity.”

Zoisite says nothing. He's read a little about the Silver Kingdom—what little is known of it—but it all seems fanciful and misleading compared to the reality in front of him. The Queen is even smaller than he, and the hair and translucent wings threaded out through an opening in her dress and cloak put him more in mind of dragonflies and tawdry masquerade decoration than gracefulness and mercy.

The servants put down her hair and pull off her cloak. Behind her is another, slightly lesser, commotion, and someone enters in a heavy blue cloak, hood and hem bedazzled with stars in what Zoisite thinks might be real gold leaf. A thin hand reaches out of the cloak and pushes back the hood, and a mass of gold hair spills out. The face under the hair is pale, but transformed with delight, and there's just enough tint of pink in the cheeks to make its owner look, if not human, at least not off-putting.

“Are you sure _that_ isn't the Queen?” he whispers back. Beryl rolls her eyes.

“Probably the princess,” she says, and elbows him in the ribs. “She's a child, _look_ at her.”

“I am looking at her,” Zoisite answers, and elbows back. Beryl shoots him a sharp glance. “What?”

Beryl opens her mouth to answer, but her words are lost in a loud fanfare from below, and she shakes her head and drags Zoisite to his feet and then to the stairs. “Come on, you're supposed to escort me.”

She threads an arm through his, and Zoisite brushes down the front of his jacket before smothering a giggle into the fabric of her voluminous sleeve. Beryl stares down at him and hisses a _what?_ through her teeth—there are already a few heads from below turned in their direction. Zoisite tips his face up toward hers.

“We're . . . _here_ ,” he says, and fights down another attack of the giggles. “Getting ready to meet a queen.”

Beryl's proud _look what a lady I am_ expression melts into a grin, and she struggles to get it back before settling on _I am smiling benevolently on you._ “I _know_ ,” she says, and elbows him to stand up straight just before someone calls out _Her Ladyship Beryl of Elysian-town_ and Zoisite realizes he's not sure which of them is supposed to step forward first and there's an entire sea of faces staring up expectantly in their direction. He forces down panic and finds Kunzite in the small group of officials, and Kunzite pulls his stare away from Beryl just long enough to raise his eyebrows and offer up a curt little nod. Zoisite tugs on Beryl's arm and steps onto the staircase, fighting down another attack of giggles. When the time came to decide who was escorting her, Kunzite was perhaps a little to quick to offer his own arm, and Zoisite almost certainly a little quick to laugh when he was picked instead.

They round the curve of the staircase, Zoisite mostly hidden by Beryl's sleeve and Beryl's hand trailing the wrought iron railing, and a low murmur goes through the group of Lunarian officials below them—and then the Queen turns away from Endymion to look at them—

Zoisite sees the glaze over her eyes before anything else, and then the slight roll, and then that not a single person in her party realizes what's just happened. The stairs? Too slow; and with the fabric of Beryl's dress trailing after them, too dangerous.

The murmurs turn distressed when Zoisite grabs the railing and vaults it down onto the floor below, racing across the vestibule and shoving aside two people without a thought—mahogany skin and green velvet jackets, they have to be Earth men, and any bruises he might leave with his elbows aren't likely to shape the course of interplanetary politics for decades to come—and manages to get a single arm under the Queen's shoulders right before her head hits the floor.

From this angle, the murmurs are very loud indeed—verging on a rumble—and mixed in with a soft, distressed voice crying something out in a language Zoisite doesn't know. A servant girl brings water and a cloth and bathes the Queen's face. Her eyes open, but there's no confusion in them; instead he sees alarm, and her face—already so wan to start with—looks downright spectral. Even so, she seizes his wrist in a grip tight enough to be his own. 

“Who is your mother?” she asks, in a voice with an accent far less foreign than he would have expected. Zoisite stares down at her in confusion.

“What?” he says, and then someone drags him backward by the shoulders and hisses something that includes the phrase _dare lay your hands on the Queen_. Zoisite ignores it and shrugs off the hands so he can stand. The Queen sits up and puts a hand to her head, and Endymion reaches out to steady her.

“Your Majesty?” he asks, and the Queen nods, then shakes her head as though to clear it as he pulls her to her feet.

“I'm quite all right,” she tells him. “Thanks to this young woman.”

Zoisite reminds himself to stay upright and focuses very hard on keeping his face neutral. Then he hears a deep and entirely welcome voice behind him.

“Begging Your Majesty's pardon, my brother is a man, or close on to one,” Beryl says from the foot of the stairs, and Zoisite can breathe again. There's another low murmur through the crowd of attendants and servants Serenity of Nikkal, Queen of the Silver Kingdom, has brought with her. From above, Beryl is nothing more than a striking shadow; from her place on the marble tiles, it's clear she towers head and shoulders above the entire Lunarian court—the Queen could fit entirely in even her lamplight-shortened shadow.

“He saved my mother,” that soft voice says, no longer so distressed. “We're in your family's debt, Lady Beryl.”

Zoisite turns in the direction of the voice. Completely shed of her cloak, its owner proves to have the same strange hairstyle—this time in shades of gold rather than silver, and only to her waist—but livelier eyes, and a white dress that looks to Zoisite's eye to be made up entirely of white pressed flowers. Behind her, with the thick blue cloak over her arm, stands a second girl who Zoisite envisions entirely in furs—her hair a tawny lion's mane, her skin a silky fawn all the darker against cream-colored fabric. She doesn't smile, and Zoisite wonders if the chill even the palace walls can't keep out tempts her to throw her mistress' cloak around her own brown shoulders. 

Zoisite knows that combination of hair and skin—has seen it in the history books Kunzite brings home. She must—

“But I have to say,” Endymion says, from behind him. “I wouldn't have thought there was a human being alive who could make that jump. The Elite Service would call you a credit for that.”

“Indeed,” says the Queen, and then, “Serenity, put your cloak back on, you'll take a chill.”

“I feel fine,” the girl answers, but lets her dark-skinned companion drape it around her again. The Queen's eyes glance over her own small entourage—two older women, one each in red and blue, and a third person in an unobtrusive white shift who Zoisite thinks might be male. Endymion speaks, suddenly, in the way Zoisite is familiar with speaking himself to cover a breach.

“There are rooms ready,” he says, and Kunzite glances in his direction. “My men can escort you.”

“Men?” the Queen asks, and something in the tone of her voice makes everyone in the room shuffle uncomfortably and glance sidelong at each other. Beryl raises her head.

“I can escort the princess, if it please your majesty,” she says, and Zoisite hears a soft whisper throughout the group at the foot of the stairs. “We sleep in the same wing.” 

The shadow over the Queen's face lifts; she doesn't smile, but the ghost of something gentler touches her mouth. 

“If you please,” she answers, and Zoisite feels the entire court try to discreetly let out a breath of relief. 

\--------------------------- 

“They said Venus has to sit in,” the Princess sighs, from a place on the library mantel. Her name is Serenity the Younger. Zoisite privately thinks it sounds ridiculous. How is she supposed to rule if her very name marks her as always a successor, never a Queen? But she, herself, is pleasant—mostly. “I wish I'd known I was supposed to sit here alone. There aren't many flowers on Terra, are there?”

“On what?”

“Here,” she says, and waves a hand. “Your planet.”

“Earth,” he tells her. “They're not in season.”

“What does that mean?”

“Means it's too cold right now,” he answers, and watches confusion pass over her face. “What, do you not have seasons on the Moon?”

“I don't know,” she says, and her tone is maddening—she might be saying she can't choose between a green silk and a blue. “Do you mean to say it's not always this way, on Earth?”

“Is it always on the Moon?”

Serenity pauses to consider. “Yes,” she says at last. “A little. There are greenhouses outside the Dome, and they're quite warm. But inside it's always very cool. Not quite this cold.”

“The Dome?” 

“The bubble of magic that allows us to live,” Serenity answers. “Do you not have one here?”

“No,” Zoisite tells her. “I don't think. And in parts of the year it's warm and in parts it's cold and most of the time it's somewhere in between.”

“Will it be warm soon, do you think?”

Zoisite bites his tongue before he answers. “Not for months,” he says. “You _have_ got months, haven't you?”

“Of course we have months,” Serenity tells him, and she has the nerve to sound offended. Then she looks around again. “Is this what Terr—Earth people do all day? Read books?”

“Sometimes. I suppose you think that's boring too.”

“I just thought . . . I know Earth has a simple society, but I thought it might be a bit more exciting than home. We have plenty of books there.”

“We have plenty of things that aren't books, they're just not in the palace,” Zoisite tells her. Simple society, indeed. He looks out the window at the wet piles of snow on the ground and jerks to his feet. “Come on.”

“What—where are we going?” Serenity doesn't even sound alarmed as Zoisite all but drags her to Beryl's room. He digs through the trunk that holds her less-formal clothing and tosses a dark red overblouse in Serenity's general direction without looking before finding a heavy brown skirt for himself.

“Put that on. Over your dress, I mean. Try to cover all the flowers. And take your hair down.”

“What are we doing?”

“Going somewhere more interesting than the library,” Zoisite says. Then he pauses, Beryl's thick skirt held in his hands. “Do you know about magic?”

“Yes! Venus can do it,” Serenity tells him. “I've always wanted to learn, but . . . Mother doesn't think it's a good idea. Yet.” Under the _yet_ Zoisite hears a determination far different from the passive disinterest that came before. “Do _you_?”

“Some. Close your eyes.” 

He checks twice to be sure her eyes are closed before laying aside his court jacket, taking a deep breath, and yanking his shirt off over his head. Getting out of the undershirt is harder, but he manages at last and folds it carefully inside the shirt so it won't be found. Then he yanks Beryl's skirt up to his underarms and ties it with the long ends of one of her shawls before putting his jacket back overtop. “All right,” he says. “Open.”

Serenity does, and the delight apparent on her face is enough to convince Zoisite his secret is safe. He yanks the plait out of his hair and twirls a finger to make Serenity turn back to, then reaches out to braid up her own and coil it against the back of her head. 

“There,” he says, and pulls her in front of Beryl's mirror. “We're sisters, visiting the city from Tyalan—“

“From what?”

“Tyalan,” he says. “It's a town about two days from here. Let's go.”

“How are we to leave? The whole palace is guarded.”

Zoisite swings open a window. “Can you jump?”

Serenity eyes the distance to the ground, then hoists herself into the window and lets go. Zoisite hears her let out a shocked squeal as she lands in a mound of fresh white powder.

“It's cold!”

“Well, get up, let me go,” he says, and follows behind with a second shawl tucked around his arm. He wraps it around her shoulders, finds a stick, and pushes Beryl's window shut. No point in blowing out the fireplace. Then he makes for the courtyard.

“Where are we going?”

“Trade wagon. There are always a few.”

It takes the space of two minutes for Zoisite to find one with horses in tack and ready to go. Getting Serenity into the back is harder—it's dark and smells strongly of wheat chaff and horse. 

“We could just try to walk through the gates,” he says, and with a long-suffering stare that says Zoisite is a simpleton Serenity tries to boost herself into the wagon. The full skirt under her blouse prevents it, and finally Zoisite gets to one knee and laces his hands together. 

“Step up.”

She does, then stares when Zoisite pulls himself effortlessly into the cart. “Is this how Earth people travel?”

“It's how I travel, at least,” Zoisite tells her, and she peeks out between the canvas flaps over the back of the cart. “Don't, we'll be seen.”

“Are we not supposed to be here?”

“Some drivers mind, some don't. But we're both supposed to be in the library.”

Serenity sits back and doesn't say another word until the cart slows and Zoisite peeks around the flap, then motions her onto the backboard. “It's still moving!”

“We'll have to jump, that's all,” he says, and holds out a hand. She seizes it in both of her own and nearly tumbles off the back. “On the count of three, one—”

They never make it to three, and Zoisite counts it a mercy he manages to keep them both upright with Beryl's skirt tangling around his ankles. Zoisite brushes down Serenity's skirts and offers a glance around himself to lend credence to their charade. “This is the marketsquare.”

“The—what?”

“Where you buy things. Food, cloth, books. Baubles, if you have a mind.”

Serenity darts immediately to Ziban. Zoisite follows before she can open her mouth; she speaks Ell fluently but her accent is heavy, and Zoisite expects no more than two words would give them away. Instead he pitches his voice as high as he can and asks for a serving of the fried potato slices cooking in the barrel behind the saleboard, then picks up a melon and examines it critically. Ziban offers his usual bluster about the melons' source, best in the marketsquare, fresh from the Southerlands. Zoisite knows better—Ziban buys off the same ships and caravans as the rest of the square—and he also knows he's being cheated when he only talks Ziban down to four silver instead of two, but he's getting a hard eye and doesn't dare risk Ziban recognizing his trading style.

He takes the melon and the fried potatoes with their shaken oil and salt, suggests a seat on the fountain and then horrifies his guest by filling his hands with water to drink.

“Do you not have wine?”

“At home, maybe,” he tells her, although he tends to prefer milk and Kunzite drinks mostly coffee. “In the square we have this.”

“But—don't other people drink—?”

Zoisite raises an eyebrow. Serenity bites her lip, then dips her hands into the water and gasps at the cold before sipping and then letting the rest splash back into the fountain so she can tuck her hands under her arms. Zoisite decides not to point out how awful her manners are. Instead he stares across the square.

“Have you got plays, on the moon?”

“Plays?”

“Stories people tell by pretending they're the people in the stories.”

Serenity's face lights up, and she uses a word Zoisite doesn't know. It sounds almost like bells. Zoisite flicks his fingers off his forehead, and Serenity's face shutters again. Zoisite wonders what obscene thing he's just suggested in Lunarian. 

“There's a playhouse here and we can get in for a silver each. I've got money.”

“We could see a . . . . play?”

Zoisite nods, and pulls her toward the end of the street. The playhouse is dark, and even though she looks human enough in her heavy winter cloak and Beryl's clothes, Zoisite really wants her face under cover.

The play that's on is a silly thing: star-crossed lovers, a curse, swordfighting, mostly spectacle and very little story. But Serenity laughs and claps her hands with the audience at particularly clever puns, and understands Ell well enough to follow the plot. They stay after to let the crowd thin around them, and Serenity turns to him, face expectant.

“Who were they?”

“Who?”

“Byantya and Gyin.”

“From the play?”

Serenity nods. Zoisite stares. “They're made up.”

“Yes, but they must be _about_ something!”

“No, they—“ Zoisite pauses at the inner door of the playhouse. “Do you mean to say plays on the moon are only about real things?”

“Yes, histories and legends,” Serenity tells him. “Sometimes we have them instead of lessons.”

“That's not how it is on Earth. Here they're just entertainm—oh _no!_ ”

“What?”

Zoisite stares in horror at the sun, then grabs Serenity's hand. “Sunset! They'll have missed us ages ago!” He takes off at a run, hand clamped tightly over her wrist. The very fastest of sprints can't get them back in time.

“Slow down, I can't keep up!”

Zoisite slows long enough to yank Serenity onto his back, then takes off again. At the end of the street he spots a wagon, just getting up to speed and on its way up the palace road. He lets go of the two thin wrists dangling over his shoulders. 

“Hold on!”

The jump onto the wagon's back is far from his most graceful, and they land hard enough to click his teeth together, but both of them are still there, Serenity's arms locked around his shoulders and legs around his hips, laughing breathlessly into his ear. There's a sharp tug on his skirt, and Zoisite glances down. Caught on a splintered board. No good. 

The wagon clatters into the front courtyard of the palace, and the smell of strange animals slams into Zoisite's nose. He gives one fast glance around and—

_A menagerie. There's a traveling menagerie._

He doesn't have time to panic before he realizes the wagon is slowing down, and if he intends to get them off safely he has to jump. He lets go and springboards backward, but the skirt snags even more tightly on the board and spills both of them into the yard, rolling through frozen dirt and popping seams everywhere. Serenity lets out a low cry, and Zoisite scrambles off her dress before pulling her to her feet and in through the massive front doors, ignoring a shout from a guard.

Where to go? Back to Beryl's room or the library is impossible; they could be there for hours unseen. He doesn't know where the council of Moon and Earth will have met, and nobody would allow two children covered in snow and frozen mud into the kitchens. Finally he points through the front atrium to the second staircase at the back.

“Throne room,” he says. “Hurry.”

Zoisite is faster but Serenity more nimble at navigating staircases in full skirts, and they reach the top at the same time. Zoisite barrels down the hall, Serenity following behind him with her skirt hiked up above her knees to keep up, and when Zoisite has to stop to slam open the throne room door with both hands she slams into him from behind. The pair of them hit the ground just inside the throne room door in a heap, and Serenity—the older one—leaps to her feet, Endymion and Kunzite alongside.

“Serenity! Where have you been?”

Zoisite gets breathlessly to one knee, then to his feet, and then there's a sword under his chin. Endymion's, put there after only a few long strides across the room.

“And you, madam, what do you mean by being here?”

Zoisite stares down the blade of the sword, bewildered. “ _Madam?_ ”

The sword lowers from his neck to his chest. Zoisite looks down to follow its process, afraid he's about to be gutted, and then his eyes widen.

The three clasps from the front of his jacket are missing, and the shape under his borrowed dress is visible to the entire royal court.


End file.
